What do you do when you realize your entire life is dedicated to the ridiculous? Mulder does some soul-searching in tonight’s third episode of the 2016 X-Files miniseries, “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster,” and learns that absurd questions often have absurd answers, no matter how seriously you take them.

In uncovering the mystery of the lizard man and his (maybe?) victims, Mulder and Scully find their typical roles inverted. What shakes out by the end is both funny and deeply felt, as Mulder and Scully learn what matters to them and exactly why it is they continue pursuing truths that, by their nature, slip beyond human grasping.

‘The X-Files’ 2016

– “Mulder and Scully Meet The Were-Monster”

“Mulder and Scully Meet The Were-Monster” opens with two spray paint huffers doing what they do best, huffing paint. But you know how it goes. One minute you’re huffing paint and talking about how you’d still get stoned if you were a werewolf, the next you’re stumbling across two dead bodies—their throats torn—and a lizard man out of a David Icke wet dream.

The X-Files have been reopened by the FBI, but Mulder’s not happy about it. We catch up with him spearing pencils into Scully’s “I Want To Believe” poster. He’s been reading old X-Files and has grown morose: did he really waste so much time on so much nonsense?

Though the events of The X-Files miniseries’ premiere episode, “My Struggle” aren’t directly referenced, they have a clear bearing on Mulder’s mental state at the opening of this third X-Files episode. Mulder has lost his faith in the alien conspiracy that motivated The X-Files 20 years ago. He’s come to believe that the conspiracy is nothing more than a massive human conspiracy (one that uses alien technology and includes spacefaring rich people leaving us behind as Earth turns into Venus, but whatever).

Assigned to investigate a three-eyed (Or maybe one-eyed? Or two-eyed?) lizard monster, Mulder can only roll his eyes. Is this just another wild monster chase?

Mulder’s bitter skepticism is met with Scully’s enthusiasm. With The X-Files reopened, Scully realizes that it never mattered whether or not the object of their search was real. Chasing X-Files is fun!

And so the hunt begins, with Mulder and Scully switching roles at the crime scene. Is this the lizard monster’s lair? Nah, just grey wolves, Mulder concludes. But in short order they’ve tracked the monster down to a truck stop and very nearly trip over another dead body.

After some misadventures with Mulder’s new camera app (constantly snapping pictures so he doesn’t miss out—like all the other witnesses to paranormal phenomena—is one of the episode’s better running gags) and an elaborate peeping tom hotel, Scully and Mulder track down their mysterious, shape-shifting lizard man.

But just when Mulder is staring to get his mojo back (This blood-squirting defense response resembles the horned toad, Mulder explains with evident glee. “The Internet’s not good for you,” Scully responds.), he’s confronted by more absurdity than he can handle. And this is Mulder we’re talking about, the very same Mulder who found Eugene Tooms plausible.

By day the were-monster is a sad-sack manager at a smartphone store (played by funny Kiwi Rhys Darby), transforming into a lizard man at night. But when Mulder confronts him in a graveyard, he learns that the truth is even stranger. The were-monster was a lizard man all along, cursed to become a were-human because of a human’s bite. The curse even compels him to seek out stable employment, wear underwear, and plan for retirement.

Just as it does with Mulder, the plot reveal in “Mulder and Scully Meet The Were-Monster” overturns our expectations of how these things are meant to go. And yet, the lizard guy is right, is a lizard that turns into a man really any stranger than a man who turns into a lizard?

Mulder’s doubts are assaulted with the truth, but it’s a truth so absurd that it can’t possibly be believed. Scully can handle it—she’s just along for the ride—but what can Mulder do with a reality that can’t possibly fit reality?

At the end of the third X-Files episode, “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster,” Mulder doesn’t have a concrete answer. Still, he knows, once more, the world is a strange place. And when it comes to The X-Files , that will have to do.